Meadow Lakes

In addition to being a first-rate nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in our short-term care rating, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Inspection grades are based on several datapoints found on the a nursing home's inspections. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also performed well in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A-. Very few nursing homes received a better grade in this area. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 97.10145 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In the final area, this nursing home also received a very strong nursing grade, with a B+. This rounded out an elite profile. Our nursing grade is mostly tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these data points as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.